Well, well, well, what can I say I stumbled upon your forum when I was looking at Japanese nostalgic cars and noticed it was a predominantly northern hemisphere crowd over here. Anyway, I thought I might introudce myself, or at least my car anyway... I don't think there's been one of these posted up here so enjoy

To start off I'll give you some background information, having owned 4 of these now but with only one of them ever making it back on the road due to their poor condition, I thought I'd treat myself to car that cost a little more then $1000. This one cost quite a little more then that sum and well to be honest it's about as much as I've ever payed for one of these, but condition is everything.

The car is mint by every sense of the word, my brother went and looked at it as it was about 200kms [or 120 miles] roughly from where I live, when he did he told me that it was a 2 owner car owned by an eldery man who's had it since the day it came off the boat in Brisbane in 1991, the car with log book history serviced every 5000km's and only 150k genuine kilometers on the clock, I'd trust as much given the condition its been kept in. It really is immaculate.

This particular car is an example of an early model being made in 1985 just 3 year after production official began on Soarers and so it has the early model front grille and bump strips. Being so you can tell the difference with the early style front beaver panel and slightly different bump strips. The most notable difference is the "louver" panel vs the later "honeycomb" panel it's not quite as nice, but I do have a latter model beaver panel to go on it here as well

As this car really is as clean as it is I don't have huge plans, no I don't want to deface a pristine example of this classic 80's Toyota Coupe.. It really is a little to good to modify much from it's original condition so I have a couple of parts lying around ready to go on to it but I'm not really going to destroy an otherwise Immaculate car.

So what plans then?

My aim is really to build a super respectable show car if anything it's primary purpose will be to sit there and look pretty at meet ups and track days and such keeping with the condition of the car so basically I'll be putting a clean set of wheels on this car, dropping the ride height a little and other then that just adding a manual gearbox and a rebuilt F series LSD, some exhaust/intake mods and if I get bored with it possibly some ITB's I have sitting here taken from a black top 4A-GE the engine it self will be staying in the bay... to be honest anyway for a street car which is the primary purpose of this build an N/A 1G has more the enough power... these are a light car for such a big car weighing only 1250kg's and with 140hp behind the fly wheel that's over 100hp per tonne which is where the fun starts to kick on.

As for external mods, I may pick up a set of tasteful fender mirrors and do away with the door mirrors going back to the traditional design of the xZ1x series Soarer rather then the current modified door mounted mirrors that were put on these cars to meet the import standards. I've also been thinking of what wheels I would ideally like to run on this car.

I do have a pair of 16x9" Impul Pro Mesh, but for a car that's this clean I want to achieve that look of keeping it a clean car Mesh wheels can achieve that but I feel they're a little to common.

I've been thinking as such of wheels that I'd like to run on this thing. Crossing my mind are a few things at the moment and on the top of that list are Hyashi cherry Blossoms. My only problem is that they're quite rare making them hard to come by for a reasonable price. I've already dropped a sizeable amount of cash on acquiring this car, so I feel spending another $5000 plush shipping to acquire a set of Cherry Blossoms might be a little to much. Refining that list down a little bit I've come up with a few other ideas including SSR Stars, and a set of Techno Racing wheels, but I haven't quite made my mind up yet.

On the last car I owned I had a set of 17x9's and felt they were a bit to big, I think I'm going to go for a set of 15x9's or 14x9's input and ideas are more then welcome

Note the immaculate body and interior, not a spot of rust anywhere in this baby, it's almost a crime I'm getting a car in such good condition. Also note the 15" "supra" wheels.

No they're not your standard xA61 Supra wheels they're factory option JDM 15" examples that are quite rare in Australia. This car also came with factory option JDM "Supra" seats. The coolest part of these seats?

Unlike xA61 seats they have pump up lumber support they also have fully adjustable side lumber support so you can basically strap yourself in and turn them into buckets...

They're getting rare as rocking horse droppings in this country in any sort of decent condition... I had another 2 that I planned to restore but there was way to much cancer in them to be honest

Once these things start rusting out in the boot you can't really save them. I don't know whether it's so much the salt in Australian air, or the salt on Japanese roads but they tend to rot pretty badly.

It seems most of the ones of these i've seen around are in either NSW or QLD, but that might just be the fact I'm in QLD

Jut between you and me I'm not the hugest fan of Z20's.. Z10's are where it's at really I mean when a big car like this weighs about 2750lb's the way I see it is that they're a bit like an oversized S13 they take to modifying about as well as an S13 as well... I mean I have another rolling shell here's that's probably going to get a Gen 2 3SGTE and coilovers... with the interior stripped out and some light weight wheels it shouldn't weigh more then about 2600lb or about 1150kg's sorry if my maths is a little out we use metric over this way....

In this day and age you could probably import a 10 for around $8k to Australia I couldn't picture being more then about $10k to the US... If you did that you'd have yourself a classic piece of 80's Japanese motoring which has actually already got quite a steady following building up here in Australia

To be honest I can see that growing globally as Westerners learn about Shakotan, Bosozoku, Kyushu Kai and Yanki cars... It's pretty much the next cult car that I see taking off eventually. After the whole thing of Initial D taking off globally... I digress the Z10 actually has its own Anime series called Shakotan Boogie.

To be honest for a car that's as light as what these are a 6M-GE has more then enough power to be adequate, anything on top of that is really a bonus

The simple option however if you want to neglect that is is a 7MGTE with metal headgasket or a 1GGTE from a later model Supra/Soarer. Neither engine would look entirely out of place if you were being pedantic as a traditionalist. If you want to get really pedantic HKS did a twin turbo 5M kit in the 1980's so that's your other option.

JZ engines do fit but require after market engine mounts that bolt on to an M series cross member.

To be honest I'm not sure why nobody has done anything with an M-TEU but then I've looked at an M-TEU and they really are an ugly lump of metal. It's hard to see their relation to any of the rest of the Toyota M Series engines

Issue number 1. My brother and I finally got time to pull the struts off so I can put my coil overs in today... here's the fun part the useless people who did the road worthy were shody as shody gets. We pulled the struts out, and here's the fun part, there's no brake pads and one of the rack boots is completely stuffed. So they changed the brake lines, didn't notice there wasn't any brake pads. The brake pads could have fallen out when we were driving it home... I payed quite a lot of money and I'm not impressed

I feel like ringing up and reporting the useless cants that gave this car a road worthy, not happy jan. Obviously I'm not gonna put the struts back in half way through the job and if I turned up to that shit hole with coil overs they're just going to blame me for putting coil overs on the car.

Either way they're in the middle of whoopdi doo.. so it's not going back there anyway not that I'd want it to

Day 2

Have to excuse the potty mouth yesterday I was a little in the bovine droppings shall we say after paying so much to have a useless idiot give my car a road worthy. I'm still seriousely considering reporting them for being so useless.

My brother and I pulled the coil overs out of my other shell. They were a little to high so we swapped the TRD greens I already acquired for a set of TRD yellows, we also cut the coil overs we had already made and welded them. Without measuring them the coil overs sat about 60mm lower...

Step 2: we bolted them in after a few expletives, etc... my brother adjusted them. Being used to an AE86 he adjusted them considering how much higher the lighter car would sit. haha just a little to low I might say....

Step 3: we jacked it up and added another inch or two's ride height... it's ridiculously low but then there's more pressure on the front springs because we haven't cut the rears.

Lets just say its postively slammed. I think staying with the 16's is a good idea. Unless I want to run stupidly high sidewalls then I don't think its good to go down to a 15" tyre let alone a 14" tyre like I was thinking about and if this thing is going to get driven at all on track then with smaller tyres and higher side walls there would be to much side wall flex.

Sorry for the lack of photos however the camera I have crapped out a month or two ago. I'll borrow my dads powershot and get some good photos happening

just a couple of shit pics from my laptop

Slammed.

for comparison

Wheel nuts off to fit spacers

I'll get round to getting some more pictures tomorrow, needs longer control arms to push the front wheels out. I also need to get around to raising it a little, it scrapes pretty badly right now.

Took it for a drive tonight 100% improvement, i'm always impressed at how much these cars are improved with simple suspension mods. I'm also impressed at how pokey this engine is, with a shorter diff and a manual box it'd be fine to slide.

Looks so damn long when its down that low, have a bit of camber happening on the rears as well... you can't really get around that in these unless you want to do an S13 suspension conversion and chop the body up and I don't really want to do that to this car.

I'd be interested to hear whether any of you guys over on the other side of the globe have worked out a way to sort out the camber issues on your MA60's because I really haven't

I've got T3 RCA's I just have to put them in... I'm getting longer control arms to push the wheels out further and then I'm going to remove the stops so I can get some more lock. I think I might use RA60 spec, or even Mitsubishi Sigma control arms and then I'll put the RCA's in when I do that

These things need more lock, if you've ever driven an MA61 you'd know what I mean